Handicrafts of the nuns of the Tambov Ascension Convent in the mid-19th – early 20th centuries

Abstract

The main feature of monastery handicrafts in Russia was considered to be good taste and impeccable purity of execution of any technological tricks. They were always in demand not only among church officials, but also among townspeople and wealthy peasants. It was believed that the key to mastery was sincere prayer. Tambov was a city of officials and military men, whose uniforms were necessarily decorated with silver and gold embroidery. But among the city artisans of those years, the author notes, we do not know of any gold embroiderers in Tambov. Nuns, according to tradition, were engaged in sewing and embroidery of church vestments, shrouds and airs. Consequently, the needlewomen of the Ascension Monastery covered these needs with their painstaking work. In 1918, the Ascension Monastery was closed, plundered, but continued to exist as a labor artel. It included all the inhabitants of the monastery territory. Handicrafts remained the only means for their survival. In 1927, the monastery was finally liquidated. Many nuns were repressed. But the Soviet government did not make any claims against the inhabitants of the tax-farming cells. All the living quarters of the monastery were included in the fund of municipal communal housing. No longer bound by the rules of the monastery, young widows and older orphans entered into marriages, bringing their husbands to the cells. The city gave the vacated rooms to people who had no connection with the monastery, and it turned into a huge Soviet communal apartment. But for a long time, city women came to these walls for the highest class of tailoring.